


How to Not Murder a Ship...

by Ride4812



Series: Prompts/Requests [4]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 19:26:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11881218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ride4812/pseuds/Ride4812
Summary: When One of the Actors Leaves the ShowHere's Ian's season 6 & 7 story lines minus the attempt to retcon Mickey and, in turn, smear Ian in many viewers' eyes. The simple interjection of a few lines here and there could have made all the difference.For Olga, who should have given birth to Mickey because she would have given him a lovely life.





	How to Not Murder a Ship...

Every day was exactly the same. Ian woke up, got in the shower, washed a body that didn’t feel like his own, brushed his teeth, gazed into the mirror at a face he didn’t recognize, ran his thumb over his seldom kissed lips, took the medication he despised and then went to the job that he hated more. He couldn’t stand the way some Patsy’s patrons looked down on him or worse, the way most stared right through him as if he didn’t exist. Everything was annoying from his sister, who thought she was the Queen of coffee and cream, to the customers who balled their napkins up and tossed them on syrup covered plates when they were done eating. As he stood over the trash can peeling paper off the sticky substance, he felt an aggressive tapping on his shoulder. 

“We’re going to see Mickey today,” Svetlana informed him. 

“Who?” 

“You, me, Yevgeny.”

He shook his head. “I’m not.”

“Yes you are. He won’t see us without you.” 

“I…” can’t see him like that, made so many mistakes that I don’t know how to apologize for, miss him, “I… have to work,” he said finally, too ashamed to admit he was a pussy. He didn’t have to. The glare he received from Svetlana made it clear she already knew. 

“We will go when you’re done. It’s harder for him, you know, much harder for him that it will ever be for you. He’s the one that rots in there, yes?”  
Svetlana walked away before he could protest again and he went back to the menial task of scraping a straw wrapper off the ceramic with his thumb nail. When tears began to pool on his waterline, he dropped the plate into the trashcan, deciding he didn’t give a shit, not today. 

The ride to the prison was quiet. Yevgeny slept and Svetlana knew better than to talk to him. Staring at the rearview mirror, he watched the city shrink as they drove farther away from it, another reminder of the distance between them. The first time he went to visit Mickey, he vowed he’d never go again. Every word muttered between them was painful and made exponentially worse by his ex-boyfriend’s tenderness. Mickey should have hated him for what he put him through, the way he hated himself, but he didn’t. He loved him.  
The prison smelled like piss and bleach, one scent making the other more disgusting. As his nostrils burned, he remembered Mickey would be inhaling that air for 15 years, 5,475 days, 328,500 minutes, 19,710,000 seconds. Sitting down on a metal chair, he took Yevgeny into his arms, burying his face in the crook of the baby’s neck, allowing the fragrance of his skin to transport him back to the time before everything was fucked up. 

He tried not to glance at Mickey while his wife gave him the details of his next hit. He knew as soon as he saw him in that bright orange jumpsuit, his stomach would flip and he couldn’t afford any more nausea. After a conversation that Ian had wished would have been longer, Svetlana relieved Ian from Yevgeny duty, leaving him with nothing to do but stand on his weak legs and make his way to the booth. With trembling hands, he picked up the phone and sat down across from him.   
“Thanks for coming,” Mickey said quietly, drawing green eyes up from the concrete floor they were intent to focus on. Ian both marveled at and resented the fact that the brunet still managed to look beautiful even though he was very obviously worn down by his time spent inside and away from him. 

“I didn’t want to,” he admitted, gnawing on his lower lip. “I wish I was...” stronger, more stable, less selfish, able to cope with it, “better at this.” 

“You feeling alright?” Mickey questioned, ignoring the statement as though it was a can of worms he couldn’t muster the energy to open. “Last time you came you told me you’ve been taking your medicine… you still doing that?” 

Ian nodded. His cruel mind showed him an image of the pain on Mickey’s face as they stood at the gate in front of his house. He’d torn his heart out in denial of something he knew he needed to do. He wished he would have had the time to make it right, but like so many other things in their lives, everything had been ripped from them in those moments. It was hard to hold onto someone as they were pulled away, by force, circumstance, or both. 

“That’s good,” he said, nudging his knuckle against his nostril as he looked at Ian with soft eyes. “Right?”

“Yeah it’s good,” he agreed, wishing he was able to find a meaningful word to mutter. “How are you?” 

“Can’t complain,” Mickey replied, biting his lower lip.

“You probably could,” Ian retorted, a small smile pulling up the corner of his mouth. “Unlike every other asshole, you actually got a reason to.” Suddenly, every little irritation he felt earlier that day seemed to melt away. Perspective. 

"Nobody wants to hear complaints, Gallagher, so I don't complain."

"You could complain to me," Ian offered, thinking it was truly the least he could do. 

"That right?" Mickey asked lifting his eyebrows and biting his lip. "You really wanna know that they only give us green jello, that my cellie is some fat motherfucker named Skank who tears up the toilet three times a day, that it's cold as fuck at night, and that I miss you?" 

Ian's breath caught in his throat right next to hard lump of emotion that had been lodged there since Svetlana’s request. 

"Didn't think so," Mickey said laughing wryly before letting out a labored sigh and rolling the phone between his palms. 

"I miss you, too," Ian whispered when the brunet held the receiver back up to his ear. 

"Will you wait for me?" Mickey asked, his tone more wary than Ian had ever heard before. He was shocked silent, the question rattling every one of his bones. Mickey never asked for anything, especially something of that magnitude. "Fucking lie if you have to. Eight years is a long time."

"I'll wait," he replied, hoping that it wasn’t a lie because he didn't want it be.

"Then I don't got anything to complain about."

****  
The fact that his visit with Mickey had gone so well hadn’t made anything easier for Ian; in fact, it made his life feel more useless and empty. Everything he’d ever loved or worked for had been destroyed by his parents, his disorder, the police, and worst of all, by his own hands. Standing on a bridge overlooking Lake Michigan, he considered taking his own life, but then, instead, he saved hers. 

“So you pulled a woman from a burning car?” Lip asked the next morning, after Ian had told him the story, “like fucking Superman?” 

“Like anybody would,” Ian replied, swiftly stirring a bowl of cookie dough. 

“And now you’re making her cookies?” 

He shook his head. “No, these are for the firemen that helped me at the scene. They saved my life.” He didn’t add that they’d saved it in more ways than he could have ever known at the time. 

As the months past, he found that his new career path had fed his soul so much that he finally realized how intensely it had been starving. The friendships he made with a few of the firemen helped, too. 

“What’s with you and this guy? You hang out a lot,” Lip pressed as Ian got ready for the wedding. “Taking you to his sister’s wedding sounds pretty serious.” 

“It’s not like that. He needs to piss his father off and I’m really good at that shit. Ask Frank,” Ian replied with a grin.

“So you’re not fucking him then?” 

“You know, gay guys can be friends without wanting to suck each other off, you Neanderthal.”

“But can you be friends with a dude without sucking him off,” Lip teased, earning him two middle fingers from his brother. “So speaking of sucking dudes off…”

“Man, that was one hell of a segue,” Ian laughed.

“What can I say I’m a skilled orator!”

“Bullshitter,” the redhead corrected.

“Whatever. How was your visit with Mickey?”

Ian licked his lip and stared at the stain on the carpet. It never got easier to hear his name next to the word ‘visit’ because it implied leaving, that he left him, that he had to.

“It went well,” Ian replied, sniffing a bit. He wondered if the emotion would ever stop slamming into him at the mere mention of him. “Told him about the EMT stuff.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“What did he say?” Lip asked, taking a drag of his cigarette. “He give you shit about it?”

“He said he’s proud of me.”

Lip nodded, rendered silent by the statement. “Well, it’s something to be proud of.” 

“It is,” Ian agreed. 

****  
Ian’s falling out with Caleb hit him harder than he expected it to. He hadn’t realized how much he relied on his companionship until he wasn’t there anymore. Lip was busy fucking up his life, Sue had kids and a husband to spend time with, and Mandy was nowhere to be found. So he started to look for someone new to hang out with. 

When he met the social worker, he was just looking to get out of the house and have some fun, he hadn’t expected that he would open his eyes to a whole world that he hadn’t known existed, a world that he belonged to.

“So your new boyfriend has a vagina?” 

“Can you not…” Ian sighed, shaking his head at Lip’s ignorance. 

“He does, doesn’t he? I mean, that’s what you told me.” 

“That’s not all there is to him,” he replied, aggravated by how focused on anatomy his brother was.

“You tell Mickey about him? And his… you know, parts?”

“Really?” he snapped, slamming his drawer shut and storming out of the room. 

“I was just asking!” Lip called after him as he stomped down the hallway to the bathroom where Carl was brushing his teeth. 

“Does he know about him?” Carl asked, his mouth full of toothpaste. Even beyond the garble, Ian could hear that his tone was more sincere than Lip’s had been. 

“He knows I’m seeing someone,” he replied, pulling out his dick to take a piss. “Nobody ever promised celibacy.”

His younger brother nodded his understanding. Eight years was a long time. 

****  
When the police officer came to his door to ask him if he knew anything about Mickey’s escape, Ian felt his blood run cold. He couldn’t understand why the fuck he would do that. He had one year behind him and in the worst case scenario, seven more to go. Mickey had even told him during their last visit that his public defender believed that she could get him an appeal. It just didn’t make any sense. Still, he couldn’t deny that he wanted to see him, touch him, taste him. So, he did. Though he’d done his best to move on, there was no denying that Mickey was not somebody he could move on from. 

“This goodbye?” Mickey asked, his knuckles turning white as he clutched the steering wheel in anticipation of his answer. Blue eyes lit up like a lantern when Ian chucked his backpack into the car and climbed in after it. 

“Let’s ride,” he said with a grin, knowing that he didn’t want to spend one more minute of his life without him.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, then they drove off into the sunset together never to be heard from again. My own twist ;)


End file.
